I guess I'm thinking an 'actual LD' is where the dream changes to a scene other than my bedroom; and I 'do' all sorts of things, and go places. I need to get out of the house and yard! I just felt so 'tied' to the 'reality' of the bedroom and house. No plan of how to move it along is the problem I guess. Thanks Summerlander: next plan is to heighten vision and sensation; and yes, Lucidlink, I think I need to realize completely that it IS an LD and I CAN go anywhere I want ( even if I find this induction odd).

SSILD is a modern lucid dreaming technique. It is easy to learn, highly effective, and produces consistent results over period. I developed this technique in 2011 in order to teach lucid dreaming to fellow dreamers on a Chinese forum. The first written version of the technique was published under the title "太玄功", which literally translates to "A Very Mysterious Technique". This is rather fitting because at the time no one had the faintest idea why it worked. Despite this lack of theory, the feedback on the technique was overwhelmingly positive. Within just a few months we gathered many hundreds of success stories!

Building on this initial success, we continued to refine the technique, and it essentially became a collaborated effort among hundreds of people. The tutorial went through a few revisions, and with each version we saw improvements in ease of use and effectiveness. A year later I wrote the first English version of the tutorial and published it on a few lucid dream online forums. This time I chose the name "Senses Initiated Lucid Dream", partly to conform to the unofficial but widely accepted naming convention of LD techniques, and partly due to increased knowledge and understanding gained during the past year.

While people on these forums appear more slow to embrace a brand new technique, the result was nonetheless quite promising. Between DreamViews and LD4All, there are more than a hundred success stories recorded in 9 months, within only two threads.

Today, SSILD has become one of the most popular LD induction techniques on the Chinese forum, which has grown to host more than 80,000 members. The numbers of success stories are too numerous to count. Another exciting aspect is SSILD's long-term sustainability. Whereas many techniques appear to become less effective over period as the users' initial enthusiasm wane, SSILD delivers consistent performance, turning novices to experts, and experts to masters. For example, more than a dozen members on my tiny personal forum are able to induce LDs on a daily basis. One of them even logged nearly 500 LDs/OBEs in full detail within less than a year, a remarkable achievement by all means.

Design Philosophy

SSILD is designed from the ground up to be simple, "idiot-proof" even. It does not utilize advanced techniques such as relaxation and visualization, and stays away from delicate, non-measurable mental exercises. It despises the notion that lucid dreaming is more "art" than "technique". It does not require you to be gifted or creative, in fact, there is little room for improvisation. Just follow the simple steps outlined here and you should be all set. SSILD is made so concise that if you mix in other stuff you may actually end up creating negative impact on its performance.

The "Cycle"

The core component of SSILD is called a "Cycle". Each cycle consists three steps:

Focus on Sight: Close your eyes and pay attention to the darkness behind your closed eyelids. Don't strain your eye muscles though. Your eyeballs should be resting, totally relaxed. If you don't see anything that's only normal. Do not attempt to spot visuals by moving your eyes around.

Focus on Hearing: Further relax your eyes and shift your attention to your ears. If the room is quiet enough you might be able to hear some noise inside your head or the sound of your heartbeat. However, if you can't hear anything it is okay to listen to external sounds too.

Focus on Somesthetic Senses (Touch): Direct your attention to your body. Feel it and see if you spot any unusual sensations such as tingling, heaviness, lightness, spinning sensations, and so on. If nothing like these can be felt, you can also try to feel the weight of the blanket, your heartbeat, temperature of the air, etc.

The repeated stimulation on the senses enables SSILD to condition our mind and body into a subtle state that is optimized for lucid dream to occur naturally. We should keep this in mind so we don't make the common mistake of "trying too hard" during the cycles. Beginners usually want to see things, hear things, and feel things. When nothing unusual happens they become discouraged or even desperate. Avoid this mistake at all cost! One should not expect to experience anything phenomenal during the Cycle. In fact, it is better to expect NOTHING at all will happen.

The Steps

1. Go to bed early, preferably before 11pm. Set your alarm to wake up after 4 or 5 hours.

2. Get out of bed and stay awake for 5-10 minutes. I suggest you visit the bathroom, rinse your mouth, and walk around or stretch a little bit. Try not to become too awake though.

3. Return to bed and lie down in a comfortable position, preferably different from the one you usually use. This is to prevent you from falling into sleep prematurely. However, if you are the type of person who requires extra effort to fall asleep, you may want to use the usual position instead.

4. Perform the "Cycle" quickly, repeat 4-6 times. This serves as a warm-up exercise so each step should be very short, a few seconds should be sufficient.

5. Perform the "Cycle" slowly, repeat 3-4 times. This step is the most important one. You should take extra time during each step. Thanks to step 4, at this point you should have become sufficiently relaxed and you will find focusing on the senses become much easier. For example, your eyes will feel more relaxed, and you may get visuals such as lights, colors, or movements. You might also notice that the external sounds seem to be fading into the background. Do not get excited though. You should observe quietly and after a while move on to other senses. As far as timing goes we are flexible, but in general each step should take no fewer than 30 seconds.

During the slow cycles, you may become distracted by a lot of random thoughts. This is a good indication that you are close to falling asleep. Do not try to suppress these thoughts -- they are your friends. Imagine they are gentle waves and let them carry you and wash you away from the shore of reality. You will occasionally become alert and realize you have lost track of your exercise. No worry, just start from the beginning of a cycle and you should be fine.

6. Return to the most comfortable position and allow yourself fall into sleep as quickly as possible. Do not think too much and do not worry if it will work. The quicker you can fall asleep the more likely it will work. Have faith!

What happens next

One key characteristic of SSILD is that it is neither a WILD nor DILD technique. It is a hybrid. As such, it is important to become familiar with all the possible scenarios so you will maximize your chances.

1. Hypnagogia: when we enter a dream consciously, we often encounter various unusual hypnagogic sensations. These include the sensation of falling, floating, seeing lights and images, hearing sharp noises, and many more. In fact, sometimes you may encounter sensations so strange that they are beyond words. When we encounter these sensations, chances are we are already in a dream, or getting really close. SSILD is known to cause hypnagogia during the Cycles (although this effect should NOT be sought after). It's also not uncommon for you to wake up suddenly while being bombarded by intense hypnagogic sensations. When this happens you should not become excited. Be a passive observer and wait for the sensations to amplify. You could also nudge them a little bit mentally, but do not overdo it. As soon as the sensations become clearly identifiable you should be able to perform a successful reality check and get up. Typically the dream will start from your bedroom because subconsciously that's where you expect you will be. You can also stay in bed longer and use visualization to create a dream scene manually. In any event, it is important for you to stay calm when encountering hypnagogia. Do not speak to yourselves or analyze it mentally as doing so can cause the sensations to fade and eventually wake you up.

2. False Awakening: SSILD is known to cause a lot of FAs. Not any FA, but some super-realistic ones! A typical scenario goes like this -- you finished doing SSILD and fell asleep. Then suddenly you wake up. No lucid dreams, perhaps not even a normal dream! Feeling disappointed you get out of the bed... then you wake up again! It was all but a dream! SSILD's ability to frequently create this type of FAs have been well-documented by now. Therefore, you should definitely develop the habit of performing a reality check upon each awakening after doing SSILD, no matter how convinced you are about your not being in a dream. Another possible scenario is that you slip into sleep during a SSILD cycle, and an FA immediately takes over. When this happens you may suddenly feel awake and it seems you are about to suffer insomnia. Some users complained that SSILD was causing them to lose sleep, only later found out they had been doing SSILD cycles in their dreams! Once you learn to catch these FAs your chance of success will be greatly improved.

3. DILD: When you fall asleep from SSILD, you enter your dreams with heightened awareness. As a result, lucid dreams occur. This is called Dream Initiated Lucid Dream (DILD). With heightened awareness, you may be able to spot oddities in dreams and in turn become lucid. It is also very common for spontaneous lucid dreams to occur -- you suddenly become lucid for no apparent reason.

4. Real Awakening: You wake up again after doing SSILD. You do a reality check and this time it is real. Do not despair. You still have chances. Try to stay still, and immediately relax your head, allowing the back of it to sink into the pillow. Then you need to perform a few extra medium-paced SSILD cycles. At this stage it is quite possible for you to encounter strong hypnagogia sensations. If not, just finish the cycles and go to sleep. You will have a much higher chance to succeed this time.

FAQ

Q: Can I do SSILD when I go to sleep?

A: Yes you can, but it won't work. When you go to bed you typically start with a lot of NREM sleeps which are not ideal for lucid dream to occur. The level of acetylcholine (an important neurotransmitter which is a major driving force for lucid dreams) is also at lower level. Trying to lucid dream with any technique at this stage is a waste of time, even though this is the favorite mistake virtually every beginners make.

The key to creativity is to remove the watchers from the gates, and realize how free you really are.

I have been trying to use it after waking up, but after doing it I somehow can't manage to get back to sleep. Though I might as well be having false awakenings, considering last night one of my molars got loose. I had to fit it back into my gums with my tongue, I could taste the metallic taste of blood and feel a bit of pain. I also didn't realize that my teeth can't go loose that way, so I was probably dreaming.

You have bought a ticket for a train of thought heading for your wildest dreams. Choose your destination, and enjoy the ride!

The weirdest thing is that there is no lapse in consciousness. I just do the cycles, lie down, try to sleep, and apparently enter a false awakening.Also, I didn't even do the technique properly, only doing 3 quick cycles before getting distracted by different thoughts. This technique is surprisingly powerful

You have bought a ticket for a train of thought heading for your wildest dreams. Choose your destination, and enjoy the ride!

The weirdest thing is that there is no lapse in consciousness. I just do the cycles, lie down, try to sleep, and apparently enter a false awakening.

Entering the false awakening is an accurate description. It is important to remember that when we enter the mental realm, despite possessing full consciousness and self-awareness, we can still have doubts about the nature of our surroundings. This can also happen when we attempt the "separation" technique. We often ask, "Have we entered the dream world or did we merely get out of bed in the physical world?", and then, further observations confirm that we are indeed in a dream world. The experience then qualifies as lucid dreaming because we are certain that we are indeed dreaming.

@ Everybody:

It's all coming back to me now. I think the contriver of SSILD was originally from Michael Raduga's School of Out-of-body Travel. I first came across it some time ago when somebody posted a link of where it was originally from. In the alleged original description, the hybrid phenomenon of conscious dreaming was mostly described by the popular term "lucid dreaming", but, on a couple of occasions it was referred to as the "phase" or "phase state" - which is an umbrella term used by Raduga to ease the study of OOBEs/lucid dreaming.

It has to be said that SSILD is remarkably similar to a combination of strategies propounded in Raduga's "The Phase - A Practical Guidebook" such as the deferred indirect method and sensory-motor visualisation. Raduga had been talking about "cycling through techniques" way before SSILD came about.

Not to smear SSILD itself - because it does work (me, DeltaV and others can attest to it) - but either it is a slight refinement of a pre-existing method or it is a cleverly reworded description of one going by a different name. In fact, Raduga's indirect as well as the direct methods do not stipulate a specific order in which techniques should be performed within the cycles as much as it does with the timing. SSILD, in a way, could be considered to be one way to execute cycles of techniques.

Anyone who can link us to the original description of SSILD will be my best friend! I'm assuming that the original document hasn't been edited since...

EDIT:

I found it! LOL! Tom from Mortal Mist has innocently copied and pasted the unedited version by Cosmic. The contriver of SSILD claims he has developed the technique in 2011 but in Tom's primordial version we find the unmistakably familiar terminology (anyone who is familiar with the School of Out-of-Body Travel will immediately recognise it):

"5. A WILD or direct OBE. Phase entrance may occur during the repetition, with your mind still awake. When this happens, many of the sensations become amplified. You should stop doing any further exercises, and begin focusing on the sensations until you successfully enter the phase."

http://mortalmist.com/forum/index.php?topic=5336.0

Cosmic iron didn't invent the technique. He plagiarised it and he's been appending to it ever since. The original idea came from Michael Raduga's independent research.

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

The right way it out there for you Je-Je. Don't get too frustrated, or anxious, or you may give your subconscious the message that 'it's hard'. It'll happen. Sometimes there are 'dry periods'; especially if your day to day life is drawing a lot of your attention or concerns.

The key to creativity is to remove the watchers from the gates, and realize how free you really are.